They put the number at 300,000 – but who knows? The important thing wasn’t the number, it was that a new generation made its unforgettable coming out to the world. Later in the day, after our family returned home with an ecstatic kind of exhaustion, we read about the 185 countries, the unprecedented uprising everywhere on the Earth – for the Earth.
Our choir was invited by Brazilians opposing Bolsonaro – to march with indigenous leaders from Amazonia. They were quietly powerful, nearly naked with feathers and small branches, while everyone was crazy around them. They were in town for the United Nations, as were representatives of 193 countries, and Greta Thunberg – for the annual General Assembly. The timing of it all grew the drama, starting with Thunberg’s arrival like a Charles Lindbergh in reverse, sailing on a carbon-free boat from Europe.
Traditional media-style hero-worship seems not the right idea for the uprising for the Earth. Greta Thunberg’s spectral presence is not like celebrity. This child-woman is out of category. Something remarkable was generating on Saturday around her. Hundreds of thousands of youth were more like an eco-system and less like an institution; more like first responders to a tragedy and less like professionals with opinions; more like music and less like speedy information. They were kids who were not in the system yet led by a kid who was not in the system yet. It felt like all the interlocking professionals in “the system” were watching, fascinated.
Thunberg was inspired by the Parkland survivors, and she doesn’t smile a lot. While there is joy in the swirling mass of youth, the action she is calling for has not happened yet and she seems to know it. The hundreds of thousands marched right by the stock exchange without interrupting the symbolic center of the fossil fuel economy. This new radicalism, which everyone is saying will be so much deeper and different – how will it manifest?
In her speech at the march’s end, she quietly thundered with the hurricanes and wildfires of the summer. Her politics come down to this: hold those who have caused climate violence accountable for their actions while demanding real change by political and business leaders. This has not worked up to this point. The banks have lent $2 trillion to fossil fuel projects since the Paris Climate Agreement. CO2 levels are accelerating in the atmosphere in 2019. But while Thunberg and her youth rebellion is mesmerizing, will the fossil fuel and big bank oligarchs simply ignore her as they have the whole environmental movement for decades?
For the change to be enough to bring back the birds and the frogs, and to calm down these storming children, Wall Street will have to be flooded for real.
Reverend Billy